The ‘Roseanne’ Premiere Has a Serious Trump Problem

Of course Roseanne Conner would vote for Donald Trump. You could also imagine her voting for Hillary Clinton or not voting at all. Being a fictional character, it’s really up to the writers to justify what this sitcom character did in her Illinois voting booth in November 2016. ABC’s Roseanne revival, which picks up 20+ years after the show concluded, reveals that the feminist TV icon did not vote for the first major-party female candidate for president. She’s a Trump voter, and it’s really not much of a stretch.

The reason so many Roseanne fans are up-in-arms about this character twist is because they remember the way the character was during the original run, when she was in her 30s and early 40s (and she existed in the political landscape of the late ’80s and ’90s). That Roseanne was pro-choice, pro-gay, anti-racism, and unabashedly feminist with a firm grasp on the world’s patriarchal biases. And then Roseanne went off the air in 1997 (or 1996, because Season 9 doubly doesn’t count). Then Bill Clinton was impeached, tragedy struck on 9/11, Fox News ascended, wars broke out, and 2016 happened. There’s definitely an alternative narrative for Roseanne Conner post-lotto-fantasy wherein she called BS on Bill O’Reilly, rolled her eyes at conspiracy theories, and protested those in Washington calling for wars that ultimately left America’s working-class mourning thousands. But that’s not the narrative the revival went with, opting for one that is honestly more realistic.

What happened to Roseanne Conner is what happened to a lot of our Baby Boomer parents during the 21st century: her worldview shifted with a shifting world. As we learn in the Season 10 premiere, her most liberal daughter Darlene (Sara Gilbert) moved to Chicago, a widowed Becky (Lecy Goranson) has struggled to find work in Lanford, and D.J. (Michael Fishman) entered the military and was most recently stationed in Syria. She’s watched as jobs dried up and sons were called to war and spent the last 20 years with just her husband, a teenage son (the almost forgotten Jerry) and the talking heads on Fox News. Doesn’t that sound familiar? Roseanne is one of those middle-America, blue-collar voters that used to be liberal, but somehow voted for That Man. She’s the kind of voter that newspapers have profiled and TV producers have dropped into panel segments. It does no good to argue that Roseanne Conner would never vote for Trump, because what Roseanne has gone through is what a lot of Americans–including plenty of parents I know–have gone through.

What we have to look at, instead, is how the new Roseanne deals with its #MAGA-fied lead, especially since it’s all anyone wants to talk about. Even a recent synergistic appearance on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live got heated when Roseanne Barr’s pro-Trump stance came up. The truth is that everyone wants to talk about Trump way more than Roseanne wants to talk about Trump–and that’s the problem.

Without getting deep into spoilers, the episode “Twenty Years to Life” has a lot to do. It has to get us caught up with old characters (Roseanne and the not-dead Dan), introduce new characters (Darlene and D.J.’s kids), re-introduce an old actor as a new character (Welcome back, Sarah Chalke!), and move Darlene back into the house. In addition to all that, we learn that Roseanne and her sister Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) have been feuding since the election. This is underscored when Jackie enters the Conner household for the first time in a year decked out in Women’s March regalia.

The argument that follows sounds like a game of 2016 Election Bingo, as key words (pantsuit, protests, Russia) are shouted while the show refuses to latch onto any one of them. And right when it feels like things are about to get personal, right when Roseanne starts to rationalize voting for Trump, the premiere swerves away and undercuts the moment with a Fox News joke. Then it’s onto another plotline, because “Twenty Years to Life” has so much to do besides the hyped-up snowflake vs. deplorable debate.

And that’s not right. It’s not right for Roseanne, and it’s not an accurate portrayal of what America–specifically Middle America–is going through right now. It feels rushed because when classic Roseanne tackled an issue, the conversations felt real and they never ended neatly. In the racism episode from 1994, Roseanne spends the first half upset that D.J. doesn’t want to kiss a black girl in a school play. She’s worried about where he picked up that line of thinking, and then Roseanne realizes in a tense scene that she might have racist tendencies she never considered–and that’s it! That’s the ending! Roseanne didn’t solve racism, nor did she absolve herself of it. When Roseanne did Very Special Episodes, they rarely (almost never, actually) came with a Very Special Resolution. Roseanne was as tough on real issues as real life.

That’s why the Trump plotline feels like a cheat, specifically because this is the most Roseanne issue of all time. The election encompasses everything the show has dealt with before (abortion, racism, sexism, LGBTQ rights), and Roseanne Conner is in the demographic that helped win Trump the electoral college. Plenty of sitcoms have done Trump episodes already, but none of them have been Roseanne, a show known in the ’90s for not pulling any punches or sacrificing realism for laughs. But the premiere doesn’t tackle this, the most Roseanne issue ever, in the emotional, raw way it used to.

In the reality we’re all living in, the reality Roseanne always fought to depict with brutal honesty, the election schism is not so easily crossed. Roseanne and Jackie wouldn’t get over their differences so quickly after reuniting. To be honest, there’s no way Darlene would be cool with how Roseanne voted, especially not after the way her mother raised her and especially considering that she has a gender non-conforming child named Mark (Ames McNamara). Roseanne voted for an administration with a despicable track record on LGBTQ rights, indirectly endorsing a cultural mindset that definitely has a negative effect on her grandchild, all because Trump talked about jobs. This is accurate, BTW, as plenty of single-issue voters threw their marginalized loved-ones under the Trump train because of a fleeting campaign-trail promise. And even though Roseanne went to uncomfortable places for nine seasons, it doesn’t go there in its Very Special Trump Episode.

What’s really baffling, though, is that the episode it’s paired with (“Dress to Impress”) tackles the current conversation around children and gender expression with the nuance of the old Roseanne. Viewed back-to-back, these episodes give us the new conservative Roseanne and the progressive Roseanne of old. The transition is jarring. Trump-voter Roseanne loves and supports her grandson, who prefers nail polish and skirts to dirt and jeans, so much that she defends him on his first day of school from any potential bullies.

I can speak from painfully personal experience here: voting for Trump and being a vocal and proud supporter of LGBTQ rights–so much so that you take a firm stance in public–usually don’t go hand-in-hand. But Roseanne’s train of thought, one that includes supporting Trump/Pence and Darlene’s non-conforming kid, is never questioned by Dan, Darlene, Jackie, or Roseanne herself. In fact, Trump and the yearlong rift the election caused don’t come into play again. Barr wanted to make Roseanne a Trump voter to reflect what’s happening in America, but the show doesn’t want to deal with how that political ideology intersects with every other aspect of life and all of our relationships. That is what life in America is like right now. Instead,  the election was dealt with and done in that one episode, even though the American families that Roseanne strives to represent are still reeling from it.

If you want Roseanne to feel like the Roseanne of old, you’re in luck. “Dress to Impress” is a thoughtful episode, and it’s a total turn from the premiere that treated the election as a joke. And future episodes tackle the tough stuff with honesty, just like Roseanne should. The premiere, though, deprives us of the kind of real talk that Roseanne is so good at–and it’s a talk that we all need right now.

Where to stream Roseanne